


Through the Door

by IanMuyrray



Series: Muy's OtherOutlanderTales [3]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Pre-Canon, Spirit Guides, Spirit World, ghost POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-11 23:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15983129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IanMuyrray/pseuds/IanMuyrray
Summary: Ellen has died in childbirth.Proper Highland protocol held that the door must be opened at once after a death, to allow the soul to leave.- An Echo in the Bone, Chapter 2, "And Sometimes They Aren't"





	Through the Door

**Author's Note:**

> @ladymeraud said: Anything about brain and ellen Fraser

**Lallybroch, 1729**

 

She knew she was dying.

 

Ellen Fraser forced herself up from bed, unsticking her ruined shift from the sheets, bloodied and soaked with fluids of birth - a failed birth. Her youngest child lay swaddled in a blanket, nestled in a handmade rocking crib by the fireplace. A crib made for her by her husband, a crib where her other bairns had cried and laughed and snorted and wiggled. But this babe - this babe was unnervingly still, chillingly silent. She knew if she touched him that he would be ice cold. The crib was a coffin - a place of final rest.

 

She took regretful solace that the bairn in the crib would no longer be alone. She knew she would be there to care for him. And her husband would care for their children here.

 

People were gathered in the room, but they didn’t respond to her movement, only weeping, inconsolable. Two children - a red haired boy and a black haired girl - clung to a man’s legs.

 

She moved to the window, watching the storming rain drown the farm in a sheet of grey and the lightning strike the earth, connecting it with the sky; she heard the crash of thunder and the heartbreak of people trapped inside.

 

She filled her lungs with air, amazed at how they still lifted in the heaviness of fatigue.

 

It was evening, she should be helping get the children to bed, or to clean the kitchen, but the edges of existence were sore from nausea and fever. Such daily tasks were no longer possible.

 

 

There was an undeniable pull to the open front door; she carefully crept through her home, a ghost, not wanting to disturb anyone. There should be sound, but the house was eerily quiet, and it shook in the wind.

 

A hallway of warm, flickering candlelight greeted her. Candle glow, so mundane, so utilitarian, beautiful. The quiet flames pushed and pulled against the air, like plants flowing under the water of a loch. She paused and lifted a finger to the candle, desiring to be burned, taking small comfort in the knowledge that heat and warmth would outlive her.

 

Ellen had nearly made it downstairs to the open door before she heard a small sound.

 

Light was dim in the entryway, deep in contrast to the warmth of the upstairs hall. Adso came out from under a chair, his tail pleasantly curled, and meowed at her.

 

She clicked her tongue at him and he trotted over to her, rubbing himself contentedly against her legs. Ellen picked up her kitty, clutched him to her chest, holding him against her. His warmth bled through her shift, his claws pricked at her skin, and his fur was the softest thing she had ever touched. He purred against her chest as she held him, the reverberation of feline contentment spurring her onward, leading her away.

 

Ellen pressed a kiss to Adso’s ear and went out into the rain. The warm, heavy drops pelted her skin, drenched and cleansed her shift; Adso’s fur began to clump together, to stick against the skin of her arms.

 

This was a neutral storm, terrifying and beautiful, not caring if she lived or died; it watered the farm crops she would never eat, the garden she would never again tend. She felt insignificant, and yet peaceful.

 

There was an exquisite mysticism tucked inside ordinary things, she realized.

 

At the rumble of thunder, the cat twitched against her, looking to jump out of her arms and scamper away. She held him tighter. She was dying - or maybe she was already dead - and this was her last thunderstorm. She would not waste it with loneliness.

 

Barefoot, she walked towards the mesh of trees in the distance, over the sloping farmland. The grass was slick against her feet, mud squelching between her toes. She gripped the land with her feet, relishing in the feel of raw, timeless earth below her.

 

She glanced back towards the house, forgetting for a moment what it looked like, where it was. She strained her eyes, and found it, a dim, shadowy figure, distorted by the sheets of rain.

 

She knew her children would be alright.

 

The weight of the cat seemed to collapse her chest; suddenly she felt a dangerous loss of air, a tingling in her limbs. There was a flash of light - lightning - then nothing except the whisper of rain on the land, a pause before the crash of storm, a suspicious silence.

 

But in the silence, suspended between the deep ring of bells - she sensed them. Her two boys. Ellen drew herself up, wild with relief and overcome with meaning.

 

Thunder finally quaked, and Adso jumped from her arms, escaping into an unseeable nothingness.


End file.
